Articles and Resources

QUOTE: After asserting their right to annoy in defiance of a government ban, Australian protesters received Federal Court backing today. The court, in rejecting a recently adopted regulation against any acts of “annoyance” at an event headlined by Pope Benedict XVI, made this key ruling, according to The Sydney Morning Herald: There was “no intelligible boundary” on what “causes annoyance”.

QUOTE: The Constitutional Court ruled 6 to 3 that a 2000 constitutional amendment upholding the right to life did not apply to capital punishment. The court added that the right to life had to be balanced against the rights of the victims of drug trafficking.

QUOTE: Even if the junta regains control of the streets, it has lost its last shred of credibility as the purported defender of national unity and traditional values. Since seizing power in 1962, the generals have enriched themselves while most Burmese have only grown poorer.

QUOTE: Today, Palau, a tiny island state 600 miles east of the Philippines that is internationally known as a site for recreational diving, is at the forefront of a worldwide movement to ban fishing in key reefs to allow the return of prized species. It now protects a patchwork of reefs and lagoon waters amounting to 460 square miles.

QUOTE: Michael Hirshfield, chief scientist at the advocacy group Oceana, said he has repeatedly seen government officials provide shifting estimates of how many threatened or endangered sea turtles can acceptably die each year in eastern scallop fisheries.